Why am I gonna go nuts? I got to live into early middle age before I had to watch my football team miss the fuckin' playoffs. There are Rider fans old enough to vote who weren't born the last time those chumps won anything--let them go vent some rage. The Esks would have been pretty much a .500 team with a few more bounces this season and Lord knows luck kept the streak going a couple times. To be totally honest with you, everything after that Pete Ketella fiasco has been pure gravy.

By 2004 I realized the Esks O-line was living on borrowed time and they were gonna have to invest a season in just sending out rookies and letting Ray take a(n even worse) beating. Lamentably, with Prinsen's car crash and Lefsrud's wrath-of-Achilles act, the shit hit the fan when the team had other glaring weaknesses to manage. But by September Ray was being protected and the line was playing as a unit, so much so that Troy Davis, who isn't exactly the second coming of Barry Sanders, put together a 189-yard game. So I've felt weirdly positive despite the death of the streak.

I got to live into early middle age before I had to watch my football team miss the fuckin' playoffs.

By nuts I meant what you just said. That we've had such a long period of success, that anybody outside of the city who wanted to criticize us for missing the playoffs once in 35 years could take it shove it where the sun don't shine.

And I must be less aware of the CFL than I even imagined, because the Rick Moranis joke was brand new to me. I howled.

Uh, yeah, but I don't actually understand the point of the bit. Maciocia misses Jason Maas? Wha? Is that the same Jason Maas who didn't get a start from D-Mac all last year and now has a 72 passer rating and a duct-taped shoulder? What am I missing?

Do you think the 34year streak is a fuction of Eskimo excellence or Western Conference weakness? I saw some stat, can't remember it exactly, but it was along the lines of; Eskimos finished ahead of the Roughriders for 19 consecutive years.

It's funny on its own merits but it's like some kind of extended rap about how much Richard Nixon dug Jane Fonda in 1973. There are a million people in metro Edmonton and as far as I know there were exactly two who didn't want Ray benched for Maas last year. One of them is Maciocia and the other one scowls at me from the mirror when I'm shaving. Thank God we formed a majority.

"Western Conference weakness" would be an odd explanation for the Eskimo streak considering that the West has been demonstrably better for at least 25 of the 34 years (and had five teams, with no postseason crossover, for the first half or so). It's true that Saskatchewan cluelessness and socialism have sometimes saved the day, much as it's loosened the labour market for the Alberta oilpatch, but apart from Lancaster's infamous 4-28 run as coach, Saskatchewan has never been as big a basket case as Montreal, Ottawa, and Hamilton have all been at times out East.